


the honey toast is staling on the counter

by loverletter



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, idiots in love. what else, this is just unabashed cliched funtimes... orihime cant cook and its all very good, uryuu lies about being lactose intolerant!! he's not very good at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23511532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loverletter/pseuds/loverletter
Summary: "I like your cooking.""No, you don't.""I like some of your cooking."
Relationships: Inoue Orihime/Ishida Uryuu
Comments: 3
Kudos: 57





	the honey toast is staling on the counter

**Author's Note:**

> For tachipaws on tumblr, who requested the prompt "if only I had known." 
> 
> Self-indulgent to a fault. The title is paraphrased from a throwaway line in this very fic.

Dinner was supposed to have been fun. 

Inoue-san looked, for a second, like she was trying to be brave—and then she suddenly broke out into that oddly devastating _sniffing_ noise that left Uryuu, the ostensible victim of the situation though he was, feeling like a complete and utter bastard.

“Oh, Ishida-kun.” She shook her head, “I’m so _sorry_.”

See— it was one of those times where he should’ve swallowed his nerves, kept them down, and _imposed_ , really. He’d told her about the new place on main street that did an excellent karaage-don — _with lots of mayonnaise, the way you like it—_ only for her to say something about how it was the end of the month and how it would be “bad finance” and then she’d gotten that glimmering too-familiar _eureka_ look about her.

Inoue-san insisted on cooking them dinner.

And it’d made him feel all kinds of warm and gross and horribly compromised when she did, too. The idea of a homecooked meal was always really something-- living alone for years had nothing to do with it. He’d put up a weak protest because that was his thing and then she’d waved it off because that was hers. She would pick up groceries that very afternoon, she’d said. He thought about going home and then walked into a pole.

Uryuu felt his mouth sour again.

“—and like, you’re all sick now.” She looked like she’d been out walking in the snow. She looked like the red-nosed ceramic reindeer on her microwave. “What if you _die?”_

No medical college entrance exam had ever asked that question.

“Inoue-san.” He felt the cold sweat break out on his neck again. “Look—nobody’s dying. It’s just cheese, right? I don’t think you _can_ die from lactose intolerance, even.”

_Cheese and sour cream with sardines._

He didn’t sound very convincing.

Inoue-san put her lovely cold cinnamon-smelling hand on his forehead, and he felt like saying; _now is not a good time._ Her cooking made him feel the way she did— in that it did anything but and was also; Warm. Gross. _Horribly compromised_.

She looked like she could cry. “Is it really just lactose intolerance?’

Uryuu nodded; opening his mouth was starting to feel like a biohazard. “I’m sorry. I’m a terrible person to cook for. If only you’d known.”

“No, you’re not." Inoue-san shook her head like she was suddenly mad at him. "You’re not even allergic to cheese, are you?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, intolerance isn’t an allergy, per se—”

“Oh, _don’t_.”

There was nothing but the whirring of the ceiling fan for a while, then he started quietly.

“I do like your cooking.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Okay.” He put his hand over hers. He wondered if there was something in the stew that suddenly made him so forward— or if it was just knowing how hard it was to lie to someone who always knew you meant what you didn’t say. “I like _some_ of your cooking.”

“You probably have food poisoning.” She said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Food poisoning doesn’t work like that.”

“I have the healing mumbo-jumbo.” Inoue-san rubbed her nose. “What I say goes.”

“I’m the doctor.”

“Not _yet._ ” She said, and then she laughed, and she looked heartbreaking because of how long she hadn’t done it—and some awful touch-starved part of him wanted time to stop right there, or at least stretch for hours, if not days, if not years.  
  
“Are you still hungry?”

“I can’t think about food just yet.” He said, honestly. “Are you?”

Inoue-san didn’t say anything. She held his still-clammy hand in hers. He would always be grateful for her unending capacity to overlook the small bits of ugliness that were so inherent to life.

“The karaage place is still open.” He said very quietly. “Or should be. If you want to go out.”

“You don’t feel well.”

“I feel much better already.”

“It’s bad finance.”

“Everything is bad finance.” He could smell things again. The honey-toast she’d had for tea earlier was staling on the kitchen counter. “Going to college is bad finance. Medical insurance is bad finance.”

“It’s just.” She motioned in the air. “Well. Eating out is just. Such an _unnecessary_ waste of money—"

He was about to walk into a pole again.

“Orihime.” He said. Blood was rushing against his eardrums. “ _Please_ let me take you out to dinner.”

She flushed, and opened her mouth as if to say something—but they were alike in that they knew when not to acknowledge certain inevitable truths, and she’d always had the good sense to not embarrass people, so she didn’t.

Her hand was warm now.

“Everything’s a mess.” Orihime finally said. “It’ll close by the time I clean up.”

“I’ll do your dishes.”

“Even then. I have to get ready.”

She was soft and blurry without his glasses on. She didn’t need to do anything.

“If the karaage place closes—” Uryuu started, “we’ll get ramen. If the ramen place closes, we’ll get coffee. If the coffee place closes—”

“You’ll take me to the gas station?”

“Yes.” He meant it. “There’s your good finance.”

Orihime laughed again. She laughed like he was funny. She laughed like spring rain and running water and the big bright beautiful world outside her flat making sense.  
  


* * *

  
“We can do the dishes after?”

“You’re so smart.”  
  


* * *

  
He takes her to the gas station even after karaage, even after stopping at the ramen place for fish cakes on skewers, and she picks up cheap donuts and bad coffee and gaudy tabloids about the English Royals. She starts yawning so he gives her his cup. She complains about the overpriced candy. She tells him the fluorescents make her look sick. “Like the flu.” She says. She acts overfamiliar even if it's impossible. She clings. He wants this forever.

When they step out into the now-early morning, it’s pale blue and chilly, and when he tells her to not catch a cold, that glimmering _eureka_ look washes over Orihime’s face again, and she plunges her cold hand in his pocket.


End file.
